The Nationalist struggle in India against the British colonial rule brought about the political mobilization of both men and women. The number of women who participated was small but unexpected and significant – it brought the British ‘right’ to rule into question and legitimized the national movement.
Their presence, in the beginning, was merely symbolic and decorative in nature as can be seen in the early Congress sessions where they came with their fathers and husbands, sometimes as delegates but more often as observers.
The Partition of Bengal not only strengthened the national movement but also the women’s participation. Women responded to the call of boycott and “swadeshi(homemade)” by sweeping their houses of British goods and adopting Indian goods.
Gandhi consciously involved women and attempted to link their struggle with the struggle for national independence.
Women helped in circulating revolutionary leaflets and literature and in maintaining liaison between different revolutionary and national leaders with their traditional roles masking these activities. Their participation in home rule leagues also remained limited.
All this while, the public and private continued to exist as different spheres. Only the definition of appropriate behavior was redefined. There were hardly any women leaders; girls were not included in the “samities(committees)” or volunteer movements. The prevailing ideology of the time was still too conservative to allow women to participate on an equal basis with men.
Coming Of Gandhi
The above scenario underwent a significant change with the coming of Gandhi. He not only feminized himself but also declared femininity to be an attribute of the strong. He used the religious symbols of self-sacrifice and the virtuous Sita, Damyanti, and Draupadi to appeal to Hindu women whereas protection of Islam was an appeal to Muslim women.
He called British rule the rule of Ravana or Satan, changing his stance according to his audience. He evoked the idea of collective sisterhood. Concepts like “sisters of mercy” and “mothers of entire humanity” epitomized the women’s role.
As a result, women could no longer remain aloof; began to read newspapers and listening to the conversations of their menfolk within the household. Occasionally, the women would hold meetings in each other’s homes. The women of a “mohalla(neighborhood) would invite other women to their homes to discuss political events and to sing patriotic songs.
Non-Cooperation Movement
The participation of women in the public domain started during the Non-Cooperation Movement (NCM) in 1920. This time Gandhi had promised to provide a more active role to women than that provided by the swadeshi vow.
Gandhi consciously involved women and attempted to link their struggle with the struggle for national independence. The programs for women were devised in a way that they could remain domestic and still contribute. He gave women a sense of mission within their domestic field.
Ironically, it was during this movement that Gandhi realized that the arrest of women could be used to shame men into joining protests. Women expanded their public spaces – they began to picket, protest, and consequently, were arrested.
One of the first women’s organizations – the “Rashtriya Stree Sangh(National Women’s Community)” and the “Devasevikas(divine servants) – the women-only cadre came into existence in Bombay during the course of this movement. The so-called “morally indecent” women were also influenced by Gandhi’s call and collected funds for the Congress.
Thus, we see that women gradually engaged with Nationalist politics despite the constraints of social practices, backwardness, and a low level of female literacy. They engaged in constructive activities like spinning and conducted secret activities.
They participated through two parallel processes: a) The domestication of the public sphere – women participated in the streets without compromising on their domestic values, and b) The politicization of the domestic sphere – women handled situations in their families when nationalism entered households through the activities of their husbands and sons.
Through the two interrelated processes, often the confining social practices of “purdah(religious practice of screening women from the sight of men and strangers)” and the norms of segregation and respectability were turned around and at times re-invented to become an enabling one. If women could not confront or change their circumstances through formal channels, they contested those limiting spaces by doing what they wanted to do.
Civil Disobedience Movement
Women’s public activities were more pronounced during the Civil Disobedience Movement. Though Gandhi visualized a supportive role for women, they started getting impatient and demanded a more active role.
Gandhi appreciated the impatience as a “healthy sign” but refused to increase their greater role for he believed that women can play a higher role in the picketing of liquor and foreign cloth shops. He chose women for these tasks because of their “inherent” capacity for non-violence.
He maintained that the agitation of picketing was to be “initiated and controlled exclusively by women. They may take and should get as much assistance as they need from men, but, the men should be in strict subordination to them.”
Kasturba Gandhi initiated women’s participation in the salt “satyagraha(non-violent resistance)” by leading 37 women volunteers from the Sabarmati Ashram. Sarojini Naidu and Manilal Gandhi led the raid on Dharsana Salt Works. Kamla Devi led a procession of 15,000 to raid the Wadala Saltworks.
Women in Dadar, Bombay returning with pots filled with sea-water as a part of the agitation in the salt satyagraha
Women thus participated actively in processions, picketing of foreign shops, and liquor shops. Latika Ghosh, the founder of “Mahila Rashtriya Sangh(Women’s National Community)” in Bengal, allured to the Hindu goddess Durga and Rajput queens while issuing this directive: “Everyone of you must be like a spark which will burn down all selfishness, petty dreams – purified by fire, only the bright, golden love of Motherland will remain.”
In Bengal, some women like Bina Das and Kamala Das Gupta participated in the violent revolutionary movement and unlike Swadeshi Movement where they played a domestic supportive role, now they stood shoulder to shoulder with men and participated in the assassinations of magistrates and governors.
However, everything did not go well. There were instances of women joining organizations but soon losing interest. They came to be known as “ornamental sevikas”. Apart from this, the fear of being harassed while picketing shops had led to the exclusion of the ‘wrong kind’ of women. So, when allegations of picketing women being prostitutes were made, most women chose respectability in place of solidarity with their fallen sisters.
Civil Disobedience Movement
The female activism in the Quit India Movement was visible most significantly. The important leaders of congress being behind bars, made it contingent for the women leaders to take upon themselves the responsibility of directing and taking forward the national movement.
Sucheta Kriplani coordinated the non-violent Satyagraha. Aruna Asaf Ali who marked the commencement of the movement was dubbed the Heroine of the 1942 movement for her bravery in the face of danger and was called “Grand Old Lady of the Independence movement” in her later years. An arrest warrant was issued in her name but she went underground to evade the arrest and started an underground movement in 1942.
The movement also witnessed the large participation of rural women and also women who had joined the communist movement. Subash Chandra Bose also added a women’s regiment to his INA (1943) called the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, thus, assigning a new role to the passive roles of the mythic Sita to a heroic valorous role of the Rani of Jhansi.
Conclusion
While women’s participation legitimized the national movement, it also legitimized their claim to a place in the governance of the nation. There were psychological gains too. The movement influenced the way women viewed themselves and their mission in life.
However, there were some drawbacks too. Those who participated claimed to represent all Indian women when most of them belonged to upper or middle-class Hindu families. Among the Muslim women, only a few participated, others either felt alienated due to excessive Hindu symbolism or were neglected by the Congress organizers.
The nature of women’s participation varied from region to region. In Bombay, women were best organized, most independent, and fielded the largest demonstrations. In Bengal, women attracted attention due to their militancy and the few peaceful demonstrations in a society where “purdah” was widely practiced.
They marched alongside men in the Congress parade and later joined the revolutionary groups. In Madras, where leaders were reluctant, women’s participation remained limited. In north India, Nehru and Zutschi families provided strong women leaders.
In spite of the fact that women’s participation won them great respect, not all women who participated were respected. The women, who joined the revolutionary movement, worked closely with men, wore disguises, traveled alone, or in the company of strangers, and learned how to shoot, drive, and make bombs.
They were valorized but not respected! Gandhi called them “unsexed”. Further, the male guardianship continued throughout the movement.
References:
- Geraldine Forbes, ‘Women in Modern India’.
2.The Women’s Question: Participation in the Indian National Movement and its impact by Dr. Namrata Singh.
IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 20, Issue 4, Ver. 1 (Apr. 2015), PP 23-26 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org